In many instances, passenger vehicles, such as aircraft, buses, trains, ships, and automobiles, include passenger seats with a wide assortment of portable electronic and entertainment options to encourage passengers to remain seated as much as possible during transport for safety, crew mobility, and to enable efficient cabin service. Some passenger seats may provide video and/or audio entertainment, including television, video games, internet access, and other on-board entertainment (“OBE”) or in-flight entertainment (“IFE”) components. Many of these electronic devices are mounted in pivoting arms attached to the passenger seats such that a video screen and/or a receptacle and wired interface for a passenger's personal electronic device (“PED”) are attached to the arm of the seat.
The electronic device (OBE, IFE, and/or PED) requires one or more articulating hinges and wires for connecting data and/or power sources to the electronic device. To this point, there have been very few examples of seat arms that sufficiently cover/conceal related wiring in the final assembled condition of the seat. In addition, existing seat assemblies require wires/cables to be fed through portions of the seat/arm assembly during manufacturing and/or repair operations such that one connector must be attached to the wire/cable bundle after the arm is assembled.
In certain situations, it may be desirable to fully enclose all wires/cables within a seat arm and simplify the assembly process for inserting the wires into the seat arm while improving the function of the seat arm.